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Updated: Bike Commute Data Released

Research/Policy

by Ken McLeod

UPDATE: We've released an extensive analysis of the new bike commuting data in a new report called "Where We Ride: An Analysis of Bicycle Commuting in American Cities." Click here to download it (PDF), or scroll through the report below.

The ACS is a major data source used by communities throughout the nation to plan investments and services. These figures estimate the number of commutes by all transportation modes and does not estimate non-commute trips.

According to the ACS, 0.62% of commutes are made by bicycle in 2013, which represents a modest 0.5% increase from 2012. In total, the Census Bureau estimates that there were 882,198 bicycle commuters in 2013.

Since 2000, ACS data shows a 62% increase in bicycle commuting. According to a report from the Census Bureau released this spring, bicycle commuting is the fastest growing commuting mode in the last decade.

Looking at the gender breakdown, the data shows the total number of women bike commuters in 2013 grew to 238,052 — a slight increase from 2012. According to ACS data, 95,569 more women regularly commuted by bike in 2013 than in 2006.

In coming weeks, we'll share additional data and details on the demographics of bike commuting in different types and sizes of communities. Today, check out our listing of the 70 largest cities with the highest share of bike commuters, with data going back to 1990. Download it here.

Congratulations to New Orleans, Houston and Pittsburgh — all of which saw significant year-to-year jumps in bike commuting.

Comments

Robert Prinz (not verified) Says

It's worth mentioning that the census bike modeshare numbers still count multimodal bike+transit trips as transit only, so cities and regions that have high numbers of bike/transit commuters (like SF and Oakland) are significantly undercounted in these stats. Underemployed, undocumented, and youth cyclists are also not counted, as are any non-commute trips which amount to even larger modeshare numbers.

September 18, 2014 at 5:54pm

Charles Bingham (not verified) Says

It appears this new dataset is only for large cities and doesn't include any information from smaller communities and rural areas. I believe you have to go to the 2008-12 five-year report (S0801) for that info.